Penalty Kick Online Goalkeeper Guide: Moving the Gloves

The goalkeeper turn, step by step

After every kick you take in Penalty Kick Online, the roles swap and you defend. The goalkeeper turn works differently from the striker turn:

1. The game shows the message "Tap the screen to let the opponent kick". Nothing happens until you click or tap.
2. Once you tap, the opponent strikes the ball toward your goal.
3. You save it by moving a pair of gloves on screen. The gloves follow your mouse pointer or finger, both left to right and up and down, inside the area of the goal.

There is no dive button and no target marker to click. A save happens when the gloves are where the ball arrives. The publisher's instructions describe it the same way: move your cursor, or your finger on a phone, to block the shot.

Where to hold the gloves

• Start in the middle. The gloves can only move so far toward each post, so a central starting point gives you the shortest reach to both sides.
• Move with the ball, not before it. The game updates the gloves every time the pointer moves, so you can track the ball in flight instead of guessing a side first.
• Block with the base of the gloves. Coolmath Games, which publishes the game, suggests blocking with the heels of your hands rather than the fingertips, because new players tend to reach too far.
• On a touchscreen, keep your finger slightly below the gloves. The game draws the gloves a little above the touch point so your finger does not hide them.

Some saves end with the ball held in the gloves, and some knock it away. Either way it counts as a save. A shot that misses the goal frame also counts against the kicker, not as a goal.

How shots get harder

The single-player mode is a run of 10 matches. The computer's shot speed is set per match in the game's settings file. The first match uses the slowest value, and from the fourth match on the shots are roughly twice as fast. The range of heights the computer aims at also changes from match to match. The 10 opponents are drawn from three groups of countries:

• Matches 1 to 4: teams from the easy group.
• Matches 5 to 7: teams from the medium group.
• Matches 8 to 10: teams from the hard group, such as Brazil, Germany, Spain, France, Argentina or Italy.

A match can also end early: as soon as one side leads by more than the other can still score, the match is over. If it is level after five rounds, it goes to extra kicks, one each, repeated until one side is ahead.

When the computer scores

The math bonus applies to the computer too. If it scores a regular kick while you are in goal, it gets a math question of the same type you had that round. You watch it answer. It usually answers easy questions correctly, but it sometimes picks a wrong answer on harder ones, and when it does, there is no bonus shot. If it answers correctly, you have to defend one more shot.

Tracking your saves

The stats panel has a "Keeper" page with shots saved, shutouts, save percentage and a hot-zones grid that shows the share of shots you stopped in each part of the goal. Three trophies reward saves: Bronze Glove for 25, Silver Glove for 100 and Golden Glove for 500.